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RE: In defense of the downvote option: not having it is the actual censorship
I've hurt the author's reputation and added my bit to the confusion about the flag's meaning
In the situation where you are downvoting to reduce a payout that you find excessive given the post quality, it assumes that the post already has a lot of powerful positive votes that will increase the author's reputation anyway. By downvoting, you are not suddenly hurting the author's reputation. You are simply cancelling the positive effect of some of the votes which anyway you feel were not deserved. If the post is weak, it's fair enough that it shouldn't increase too much the author's reputation either if the reputation is to remain a meaningful indicator of quality, trust and status.
This explanation does not change much: the flag is meant to affect reputation and that's how people mentally treat it: as a warning message to the author. And I have no message to the author, I just want to oppose those who upvoted.
Anyway, your reply only reinforces my point: if you say we already have this functionality (which I don't agree) then making it more explicit and clear to use, changes nothing. So if a change is proposed which effectively changes nothing - why are so many people against it?
My gut reaction was that I hated to agree with this post, because I want to see people become popular and make money. But you're right, so in service of the truth, I upvoted it. Stay strong.